IPVanish Review

$6.49 / Month

IPVanish is an original virtual private network that allows you to hide your IP address change your geographical location in order to gain access to restricted content and to bypass content filters. IPVanish has over 700 servers in over 60 different countries, including a couple of rare counties such as Egypt and South Africa, and claims to be the fastest VPN in the world (tier 1 VPN), giving you excellent connection in nearly every country around the globe.

In addition, IPVanish has unlimited bandwidth, unlimited server switching, multi-device compatibility and military grade encryptions, with 24/7 support. All these features will be expanded on further in this review.

Pricing and Packages

IPVanish offers some of the cheapest price plans starting off at a cool $6.49 a month. The is a decent price point and is something to praised as the price of VPN is something that greatly affects the final decision on whether to purchase. What is also interesting is that, unlike some VPN, IPVanish does not discriminate amongst different price plans depending on the time frame/commitment. This means that, no matter which price plan you commit to, you’ll always receive the same features.

IPVanish offers three price plans and distinguishes between monthly, 3 months and yearly packages. The cheapest and most recommended plan is the yearly/annually plan which has a price of $6.49 a month with a commitment of up to a year. Just like most VPN, the less commitment you put in, the more expensive the packages become. The 3 month plan comes up as a costly $8.99 a month and the month plan costs exactly $10. Nonetheless, IPVanish is still cheaper than other VPN services.

Payment Options

A VPN service will give you a range of payment options and IPVanish is no exception. IPVanish not only wants its users and customers to feel safe when surfing the web, but also wants them to feel safe when buying their products.

As a result, IPVanish offers payments through your all standard credit/debit cards such as Visa, MasterCard, American Express, etc. as well as offering the ability to pay through PayPal, one the most trusted third-party payment gateways on the web. IPVanish also gives the option to pay in a variety of alternative methods, such as Giropay and Alipay. Moreover, if you are super paranoid about your online identity, you can even pay by Bitcoin which is an online currency that offers unlimited protection and security when purchasing online.

However, alternative and Bitcoin purchases are limited in terms of their ability to issue recurring payments. If you are using an alternative payment method, you will need to manually update your subscription each month.

Setup and User Friendliness

Setup was incredibly easy and took around 15 minutes. Once you complete your purchase and have selected your payment package you will be given the ability to download the software to your computer, laptop, Smartphone and many more. For starters, I downloaded it to my windows laptop as that is what I using at the time. You will be first greeted with a language selection box, here just select the language you speak (obviously). After you have chosen the location you wish to save the program too and made a desktop shortcut, you will then click ‘install’. Wait for it to install and then restart your computer (remembering to save any work you have open).

Once restarted, you can then open the application. IPVanish will initially open with a tutorial option which will give you a basic overview on how to setup the system. It is dead simple and requires you to choose a location.

In addition, because of developing GPS technology, IPVanish can give you a ‘smart location’ which will choose a location for you based on connection speeds. Just remember to install the TAP device before connecting to their servers.

Once you hit ‘connect’, the software will connect you instantly to a server and there you have it, you’re connected to a VPN with your connection now secure and protected.

The user interface is incredibly detailed and simple also, with a series of tabs that allow to you make changes to your IP and will give you an overview of your connection and speeds. The first tab will give you the ability to quickly connect and disconnect from servers and will give you your overall connection time and speed. The second tab will give you a list of locations that you can connect to with both maps and filters. The third tab gives you your account details and the forth tab will give you advanced options for IP switching, if you want IPVanish to turn on automatically and it will also give you a list of your logs.

Server Locations

After researching their site it can be safely assumed that IPVanish has over 700 servers in 60+ countries, including some rare/hard to find countries such as Egypt and South Africa.

This gives IPVanish an enormous reach and allows you to connect to and from a large number of locations around the globe. In addition, the quality of the connection is unprecedented with a tier 1 connection speed, making IPVanish one the fastest VPNs in the world.

Security and Privacy

The main point of a VPN is to be secure, private and to give you complete anonymity when surfing on the web. In the case of IPVanish, there is no exception. The software offers a 256-bit military encryption which will keep even the most malicious hackers out and away from you internet traffic. In addition, the software also employs the main security protocols we tend to see with the majority of VPN services, which are: openVPN, PPTP and L2TP/IPsec, and also utilises shared IP addresses.

Moreover, the service does not keep any logs on the activity of its users and also protects your own personal logs, therefore removing the possibility of ISPs and Government agencies viewing your online activities. Coupling all these security features together, you begin to see a very security network developing!

Device Compatibility

Like many VPN services IPVanish allows you to not only protect your computer, but to also protect other devices such as your smartphone, tablet, router and much more. As a bonus, IPVanish allows us to connect to a total of 5 devices, which should be plenty for the average user. As digital technology takes over, we need to protect ourselves not only on our devices at home but also on the go, and to assume a VPN would only protect us on one device would be silly.

IPVanish has apps that can be downloaded straight from the app stores that allow you to protect your mobile devices and tablets instantly, and the software is compatible for both window and Mac, as well as IOS and Android. The 4 latter option (as seen below) have to be installed manually. However, there are good, clear tutorials that IPVanish offers to guide you through the installation process.

Customer Support

Like any VPN service, IPVanish offers 24/7 customer support and will answer any question and will fix any issues you have with the software. The website is very user friendly and you can pretty much find any answer you are looking for with a quick browse through their various tabs. However, even with 24/7 support, the service is ticket based, which basically means you are placed in a queue and have to wait for your question to be answered which may take some time. In addition, IPVanish used to have a live chat, but this was abolished for an unknown reason which is a slight negative, as most people often rely on live chats to answer their quick questions.

Nonetheless, they have clearly compensated with a great looking and informative website which is very easy to navigate. They even give you your own personal control centre upon purchasing which gives you access to your account info, billing, subscription and a cool server list that updates in real-time.

Free Trial and Refund Policy

Unfortunately IPVanish offers no free trial before purchase which is interesting as offering a free trial is usually as great marketing scheme which should increase sales. However, the service does offer a 7 day money back guarantee which allows you to claim your money back if you are not satisfied with the software within 7 days. Personally, I feel they should have increased this the time limit further as 7 days may be a little tight and problems may not start occurring during the first week of usage.

Conclusion

To sum up this review, IPVanish is a very good VPN service to use. Despite being one of the original VPN services available it still manages to compete with some of the newer additions in the VPN world. The applications and interface on all devices are easy and clear and offer multiple options in terms of IP switching, as well as offering over 700 servers in 60 different countries.

The network is incredibly secure with a 256-bit encryption, various protocols and a zero logs policy, which ensures you’ll remain anonymous and protected when surfing the web. In addition, the software can be used and logged on 5 devices at once, which should be more than enough for most individuals. In all, IPVanish is a recommended service to use.